Ventura County is a diverse community, and our clientele includes individuals, families, business owners, farmers, executives, private and professional fiduciaries, and charitable institutions. We help these clients with strategies that minimize taxation, and maximize the transfer of wealth from generation to generation.
We take pride in the depth of our legal expertise and in our service to our clients. We are pleased to carry on a long tradition of community involvement. We serve on boards and committees of local arts, educational and charitable institutions. We want to know our community so we can identify special techniques and approaches to help us meet our clients' estate planning goals.
FCOP's Trust and Estates Group offers clients the full spectrum of trust and estate services, including:
- Estate Planning: Basic estate planning through the use of wills, revocable living trusts and irrevocable trusts, including providing tax advice.
- Sophisticated Estate Planning: Sophisticated estate planning through the use of tax-advantaged techniques of transferring family wealth to future generations, including grantor annuity trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, gifts to minors, planning for generation-skipping transfers and planning with life insurance.
- Charitable Planning: Lifetime and testamentary strategies to maximize benefits for both the charities and family.
- Business Succession Planning: Buy-sell and right-of-first refusal agreements, qualified pension plans, corporate and partnership planning, including the use of limited liability companies and family limited partnerships.
- Trust and Estate Administration: Probate, spousal transfer proceedings, and joint tenancy and revocable trust terminations on death; advice regarding the administration of trusts and trust reformations.
- Trust and Estate Controversy and Litigation: Represent beneficiaries and fiduciaries in contested and litigated trust, estate and conservatorship matters.
- Disability Planning: Use of durable powers of attorney for health care, as well as guardianships and conservatorships.
- Tax Planning and Audit Representation: Advice regarding income, gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer tax planning; analysis, preparation and defense of estate and gift tax returns.
None of these services is a discrete area, of course; any number of them come into play at various stages
of a client relationship. In addition to providing the full spectrum of trust and estates services, our
Trust and Estates Group is able to take advantage of FCOP's collective expertise in related fields.
We collaborate frequently with our firm's business, tax, corporate, real estate, litigation and family
law practice groups in order to meet our clients' personal and business needs.
This is only a brief summary of FCOP's available services to meet the trust and estates needs of our
clients. We welcome the opportunity to answer any questions regarding our experience and qualifications
in this area.